English Language Learners

Damkerng T.

17:00

Hmm... That makes me doubt the OP's cool.

MARamezani

Doesn't change the fact that this is worth a "WTF?".

Um, I really went what?! when seeing this. Saying whatever coolically does mean I don't care what you say! Saying this stuff is cool among friends. Also, saying almost anything is cool among friends, as long as you don't blunder. :) — MARamezani 40 secs ago

Anonymous

17:16

@JimReynolds quarplet.com/want.mp3

Anonymous

There's an unreduced ("careful") pronunciation, followed by a pair of reduced pronunciations, slow and fast

MARamezani

> It's time you finished with your book.

Is this correct?!

Anonymous

@MARamezani Hmm, that's a curious example!

Anonymous

I don't know what to say. I guess I might not notice anything weird if someone said it

MARamezani

@snailboat I think it lacks a get to get correct.

Anonymous

17:18

But if I take the time to think about it, it looks a bit unusual

Anonymous

Maybe it's a blend of two different grammatical sentences

Anonymous

Something like: "Are you finished with your book?" ＋ "It's time you finished your book."

MARamezani

0

Q: Are there any differences between 'finish' and 'finish with'?

Is it like 'finish with' is more specific and more grammatically correct? Or are there any differences between the two? It's time you finished your book. It's time you finished with your book.

I think

Anonymous

So, a syntactic blend (usually a type of error)

Anonymous

You can hear that in the reduced pronunciations, I replaced the [t] with a glottal stop [ʔ]. In the first slow-fast pair of reduced pronunciations, I replaced the [dj] in d'you with [dʒ], which is called yod-coalescence

MARamezani

17:22

@snailboat So, that was you in that weird audio?

Anonymous

Yes

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Wow! Clear examples!

Anonymous

He made me record! :-)

Anonymous

So if you don't like the audio, blame Jim.

MARamezani

You remind me of Interchanges' listenings. :P

Damkerng T.

17:23

@snailboat Your voice reminds me of an English teacher our DLTV invited to give a lecture to our English teachers.

(Distance Learning TV)

MARamezani

@snailboat I knew you couldn't possible be weird, or make something weird. Should've known it's that do|t.

@DamkerngT. Well, at first I thought the clip was from OED, or something.

I mean the website.

Damkerng T.

Hehe! But yes, our snailboat has a similar voice to teachers in English audio examples.

MARamezani

But it was like a snailbot, rather than a snailboat.

Damkerng T.

Nah

MARamezani

I mean, I didn't hear ocean.

Maybe a snailbat? Haven't seen or heard of one, so...

Anonymous

17:28

I searched for a picture of snails and bats together but I couldn't find one

Anonymous

I did find this snail picture though:

Anonymous

Damkerng T.

Oh, that reminds me of Tom!

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Tom?

Damkerng T.

By the way, I found one of his cousins today!

I named a stray snail in my garden Tom.

MARamezani

17:30

Tom is a cat name!

Anonymous

He shared some pictures of Tom the Snail not too long ago!

Anonymous

Hmm, that's true.

Anonymous

In Star Trek, there's a cat named Spot. :-)

Anonymous

When I was little, I had a newt named Bunny.

Anonymous

0

Q: How to use the word whatever (slang) to be cool among native speakers

My native friend uses the word whatever(slang) quite often in the sense of "anyway" I think. I would like to use it too but I am worried about sounding like "I don't care what you say"..So could you tell me where and how to use it "properly" to sound cool..This question could be controversial but...

word-usage

Anonymous

17:31

That's a tricky question!

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani Maybe it was this Thai song that inspired me. It begins with "Tom, Tom, where you go last night?" "I love Thailand. I love Pat Pong." :-)

@snailboat I wasn't sure about the OP's "cool"!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, if we just ignore the reason why they want to use the word

MARamezani

As long as you look ignorant, you're considered cool.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

We can take it as a question about how to use whatever without sounding offensively indifferent

Anonymous

17:33

And I think a lot of that is in tone of voice

Anonymous

Context is also important

MARamezani

And when other people pointed out your mistakes, instead of apologizing and/or (oh, I used slash) say whatever.

Then you're "cool".

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think it perhaps has nothing to do with the intonation or prosody, even!

Anonymous

@MARamezani The slash is a fun bit of punctuation.

MARamezani

@snailboat That is not what I can understand from the bg.

Damkerng T.

17:34

I mean, we usually can sense the other's tone.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Imagine sighing or rolling your eyes before saying it :-)

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Anonymous

And saying it in a low, flat tone versus saying it in a high-falling tone

Anonymous

I think the high-falling tone sounds a lot friendlier than a low, flat tone

MARamezani

Yeah.

Anonymous

17:37

There's also the stereotypical valley girl what ... ever! with a long glottal stop in the middle

Anonymous

See, it's yet another question where the audio player feature would be helpful.

Damkerng T.

Exactly!

Anonymous

Oops, I just realized I pronounced a full released [t] in the 2nd of 5 examples in my recording

Anonymous

I wanted to pronounce the slow ones the same as the fast ones, but a lot slower

Anonymous

It's really hard to do, though!

Anonymous

17:41

Reduced pronunciations sound really silly when you slow them down

Anonymous

And when you're speaking slowly you naturally revert to careful pronunciation

Anonymous

Oh well :-)

Damkerng T.

I think it's not easy to do consciously!

MARamezani

What do you want?

Anonymous

Yeah! I mean, it's not like it's hard to say [t] or [ʔ]

MARamezani

17:42

Whaddya want?

What do you wan'?

Wha dya wann?

Anonymous

The apostrophe isn't technically accurate since the /t/ isn't missing, it's just pronounced [ʔ]

MARamezani

Imitating snailor is phun!

@snailboat A very good place to say why you little...!

Anonymous

If I said wan' without any kind of /t/ sound, it'd sound a bit different

Anonymous

The glottal stop itself doesn't make much sound, but it cuts the previous sound off abruptly

Anonymous

It does make just a little bit of sound though as the glottis closes :-)

Damkerng T.

17:46

I think for most people, the reduced /t/ in want sounds more like "wa'n" than "wan'".

Hmm... I don't like "wa'n" much when I read it.

Maybe I want ' on top of "n"!

Anonymous

I think I might know what you mean

Damkerng T.

Yay!

Anonymous

Since the glottal stop isn't quite instantaneous (although it is pretty fast!), there's some sound made by closing the glottis that typically overlaps the preceding sound

Damkerng T.

Yes!

MARamezani

@snailboat I'm now making that sound.

Anonymous

17:49

But if the glottal stop really preceded the /n/, well, then we'd get something like button [bʌʔn]

Anonymous

@MARamezani Yeah, if you keep your glottis mostly closed and make a voiced sound, you can make a creaky sound

MARamezani

Sounds like drowning with a glass of water

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Too bad they don't have ' on top of a letter!

MARamezani

@snailboat Or, I'll be making a polished mumble.

Anonymous

Because although we like to talk about discrete sounds, in fact it's a physical system and everything is continuous

Anonymous

17:51

You can't instantly go from open glottis to closed

Anonymous

You have to have a partially open glottis in between

Anonymous

So the sound is briefly glottalized before it's cut off entirely

Anonymous

Like "creaky voice".

Anonymous

phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/…

Damkerng T.

> ˈstɑːp̚ bʌʔn = start button (BrE), stop button (AmE)

That's really interesting!

MARamezani

17:55

Yea'. Tha' jus' the fun in English.

Continues pronouncing button in BrE

Anonymous

Hmm, I think button is pretty similar in both AmE and BrE

Anonymous

Wait a sec.

MARamezani

English is phuunny!

Anonymous

I'm not a native speaker of BrE, so sometimes I get confused and have to look things up :-)

Anonymous

I speak Midwestern American English

MARamezani

17:58

Ah well. What do you want?

Anonymous

Though there's been some California influence on me.

MARamezani

Whaddya want?

etc.

Anonymous

Having fun? :-)

MARamezani

Yeah. 295 messages already.

Damkerng T.

No wonder that's what ya want!

MARamezani

18:03

Ah well. What do you want?

Damkerng T.

lol

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ah, now there we have /tj/, and this gets optionally coalesced into [tʃ]

Anonymous

Whatcha

Damkerng T.

nods

@MARamezani I wan whatcha wan'!

Anonymous

But if you ever need the strong form of you, you can't do it: "I want what you want"

MARamezani

18:06

Ah well. What do you want? ....

Anonymous

Oh, wait

Anonymous

Maybe you can, but you can't reduce the vowel to schwa

Anonymous

So it'd be more like "I want whatchoo want" :-)

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani Whatever.

:P

Anonymous

Whatʔːːːever!!

MARamezani

18:07

@snailboat Yeah. That makes sense. Ah well. What do you want?

@DamkerngT. Whatever whatever whatever? Whatever.

Anonymous

Maybe people would write that: What. Ever.

Anonymous

Using additional periods is a recent trend in English writing

Anonymous

Like "Oh. My. God."

MARamezani

Yes. You're. Right.

Damkerng T.

lol

Anonymous

18:09

I want to say it's just something people do online, but I've seen it in published novels as a form of emphasis

Anonymous

As of a few years ago

Anonymous

So I think it's actually becoming fairly well established

MARamezani

Wow. Hehe. Tim Post is some writer!

Anonymous

Did you have a link to share?

MARamezani

Well, I'd suggest you look at his highest voted meta posts.

Tim Post ♦, Mandaluyong, Philippines

84k 33 245 444

discussion feature-request support stackoverflow status-completed bug flags

15

Q: Kill the jokers!

The famous and ruthless explorer Wyoming Wilbert reports in one of his books that he once visited an island inhabited by jokers and truth tellers. Truth tellers always tell the truth, whereas jokers sometimes lie and sometimes tell the truth. Furthermore when a joker is killed than his body turns...

logic-puzzle liars

This is an awesome question!

0

Q: Type of Assimilation

So, assimilation may be of three degrees: complete, partial and intermediate. But I don't understand the difference between intermediate and complete assimilation. For example what’s [wɒts] is a short form of what is [wɒt iz].What degree of assimilation is it? And one more question... Why there...

phonology phonetics

Assimilation?

ASSIMILATION?!

ASSIMILATION?!

Anonymous

18:22

@MARamezani Yep.

Anonymous

For example, in in- + possible, the /n/ has assimilated to the point of articulation of the following consonant /p/

Anonymous

So we get impossible instead of inpossible

MARamezani

Oh yes. I mixed it up with something else.

Anonymous

Of course, that assimilation took place before the word was even borrowed into English.

MARamezani

We had a discussion a while before.

Anonymous

18:23

There's also dissimilation.

Anonymous

Yes, I used the same example to remind you of it.

Damkerng T.

Eh? Assimilation?

MARamezani

Wait. What did I mixed this thing with? o.0

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. When a sound changes to be like other sounds.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I've never thought it had a use in phonology!

Anonymous

18:25

Assimilation usually happens with sounds that are adjacent or very close

Anonymous

But there is rarely assimilation at a distance

Anonymous

Dissimilation is the opposite―two sounds are too similar, so one changes to be unlike the other

Anonymous

Anyway, questions about assimilation are more or less questions about linguistics

Damkerng T.

It's interesting that the OP mentioned "what's" as an example of assimilation. I think it's different from your "impossible".

Anonymous

It is.

Anonymous

18:27

But think about it for a moment.

Anonymous

First, let's try eliding the vowel [ɪ] from wɑt ɪz

Anonymous

We end up with wɑtz

Anonymous

But that's strange. We've got the unvoiced [t] followed by the voiced [z]

Anonymous

Maybe the [z] could devoice, changing to be more like the [t]

MARamezani

So we wats the watz.

Anonymous

18:28

So we'd end up with [ts] instead of [tz]

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think logically, we have two choices: either wɑts or wɑdz.

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. wadz? Seriously?

That's like two negative charges beside each other to me.

Damkerng T.

Why not? In an alternate reality, it could happen!

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Well, in an alternate reality, dolphins fly.

Damkerng T.

lol

Anonymous

18:31

Assimilation can work in the other direction, too. have to, for example: hæv.tə → hæf.tə

Anonymous

Now the /v/ is devoicing to be like the following /t/

Anonymous

There are lots of ways sounds can change to be more like one another. Voicing is just an easy example.

Anonymous

The impossible example involves assimilation to a different point of articulation

Anonymous

If it helps you remember it, just think of it as related to the word similar.

Anonymous

Assimilation itself is an example: ad- + similatus → assimilatus

Damkerng T.

18:33

It's easier to just think of Borg!

"You will be assimilated," said the Borg.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3689

2

Damkerng T.

:D

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. That was your cousin, right?

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani I'm not sure if he's a first, second, or third cousin, and whether he's once or twice removed!

MARamezani

That's cool.

Anonymous

18:37

Removed, I think

Damkerng T.

Oh, sorry!

Anonymous

I had to think about what cousin reduction was for a moment :-)

Anonymous

When it comes to robots? The opposite of cousin oxidation, probably.

Damkerng T.

lol

MARamezani

@snailboat I was reminded of redox reactions. Rusting came to my mind.

@snailboat Great minds think alike! Ah well. What do you want?

Anonymous

18:39

My conquest of the star board is nearly complete.

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani I will catalog that as one of your catchphrases. :-)

lol

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Sane choice. Won't regret it.

Anonymous

Coincidentally, the star board is on the right.

Damkerng T.

(I was thinking of "the right side" for a while. But hey, it's right either meaning!)

Anonymous

I remember learning starboard and port when I was little.

MARamezani

18:41

What. Ever.

Anonymous

I thought they were great words.

Anonymous

Japanese has two pairs of words corresponding to those

Anonymous

I'm not sure what the difference is, if any

Damkerng T.

Oh, two pairs?

MARamezani

18

Q: Is there any English word in which "ph" is not pronounced as "f"?

A few days ago, a friend and I were discussing how every "rule" of English spelling or pronunciation has an exception, and every exception has an exception as well. Then I brought up the rule of a ph cluster equaling an f sound (as in phonetic, elephant, morph, etc.) as a pronunciation rule that ...

pronunciation

Anonymous

18:42

Yeah, torikaji and omokaji are the native words for port and starboard

Anonymous

@MARamezani Yes!

MARamezani

Imbeciles. There's pH!

Anonymous

In fiction, I've heard/read those two words most of the time.

Anonymous

But there's also the Sino-Japanese words, sagen and ugen

Damkerng T.

As far as I know, Thai has no special words for two sides of a ship.

Anonymous

18:44

And it seems like those two are overwhelmingly more common in web corpora

Anonymous

Which is another thing I can't explain!

Damkerng T.

We have the word กราบ combined with left or right.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. See, that's what I'd do if I were designing a language.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Do they use the same set of written forms?

MARamezani

@JimReynolds Ah well. What do you want?

Damkerng T.

18:45

lol -- And the quest continues!

Anonymous

Google web n-gram counts:
取り舵　　1849　　(torikaji)
取舵　　　1238　　(torikaji, alternate spelling)
とりかじ　1707　　(torikaji, alternate spelling)
取りかじ　36　　　 (torikaji, alternate spelling)
面舵　　　9734　　(omokaji)
面かじ　　69　　　 (omokaji, alternate spelling)
おもかじ　4102　　(omokaji, alternate spelling)
左舷　　　98155　 (sagen)
右舷　　　92603　 (ugen)

Anonymous

Hmm, maybe I should throw in kana combinations

Damkerng T.

Hmm... They don't look exactly the same, but I can see some similarities.

Eh, don't 左 and 右 mean left and right (or right and left)?

Oh, yes. I guessed right!

Anonymous

There we go

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yeah, and those are the ones borrowed from Chinese

MARamezani

18:49

Someone's waiting for Avengers 2 too.

Damkerng T.

Um...

Anonymous

The native Japanese ones have to do with, originally, steering

Anonymous

Hmm, maybe that's the insight I need to get the difference between them :-)

Anonymous

I should ask a Japanese friend

Damkerng T.

Oh! Good point!

Anonymous

18:50

Poor Suparman

Anonymous

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5

Damkerng T.

I'm surprised that Tao Okamoto will be in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice too!

(She was the lead actress in The Wolverine.)

Anonymous

I haven't seen that movie

Anonymous

Now that I think about it, those uses in fiction were probably more to do with steering the boat one way or the other.

Anonymous

Ahh, I'm just a slow learner, so it takes me a while to realize this stuff :-)

MARamezani

18:54

This provokes a question:

Anonymous

Clever! A good demonstration that the semantic relationship between an attributive noun and the head noun it modifies is very nearly arbitrary

MARamezani

What are those modifiers?

@snailboat Good. I was waiting to get some stars from you.

Anonymous

Never!

Anonymous

The stars belong to me and me alone!

MARamezani

Nnnoooooooooooooo!

Damkerng T.

18:59

A pair of incompatible couple names: Joy Bryant, Jeff Stich.

Anonymous

He can take her name instead!

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

MARamezani

I think this applies to me:

Anonymous

What's the movie on the bottom?

Damkerng T.

lol

Anonymous

19:07

It's still bugging me that I have no idea what "I only want to die alive" means

Damkerng T.

I think the right one is from The Incredibles.

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Yeah.

Anonymous

By right do you mean bottom?

Anonymous

Or is it made up of two movies?

user116848

Hi friends!

Anonymous

19:08

Hello!

MARamezani

Hullo!

Anonymous

Didja do the writers chat thingy?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Bottom right.

MARamezani

@snailboat I think the upper one is frozen.

Anonymous

@MARamezani Yes! I've seen that movie almost twenty times

user116848

19:09

@snailboat No, no one is there sadly. Are you coming?

Anonymous

Oh, so there's no topic, either?

user116848

Well, I think I'll wait. If we are the only ones there then we might look like big time losers :D

user116848

just kidding XD

Damkerng T.

Oh, I can remember the tailor now, so both sides of the bottom movie are from the same movie: The Incredibles.

Hi, @arrowfar!

user116848

Rimshot!

user116848

19:10

@DamkerngT. Yo!

user116848

@snailboat Not yet :)

Anonymous

That's okay, pretty sure I can determine my loserness on my own without outside input :-)

user116848

@snailboat Hehe!

Anonymous

Hey, I saw The Incredibles!

Anonymous

But I don't remember that scene.

Anonymous

19:11

Well, I don't remember the movie terribly well, I guess.

user116848

I see.

MARamezani

@snailboat Showing the red suits.

Has anyone seen kung fu panda?

Damkerng T.

raising hand

well, hands. One for each of the sequels.

user116848

Me too

MARamezani

This is the poster for Kung Fu panda 3:

That must be Thai Long.

Damkerng T.

19:14

Oh, no!

MARamezani

He's back!

Anonymous

I saw Kung Fu Panda

MARamezani

Have you seen Garfield?

Anonymous

Precious, precious starses

MARamezani

@snailboat Ah well. What do you want?

Whatever.

Anonymous

19:17

It's actually somewhat confusing that you keep repeating that question :-)

MARamezani

What. Ever.

@Ahwellwhatdoyouwant do you have an account on meta.SE?

@snailboat

@snailbot

@snailbat

Anonymous

I have one, but I don't use it much

Anonymous

I don't think a Q&A site format makes sense for meta discussion

Anonymous

The site was designed not to be a discussion forum

Anonymous

So just cloning it and using the copy as a discussion forum is sort of a lazy approach

Anonymous

19:23

It doesn't work very well, but it does at least function as a request tracker with the red tag system they bolted on

Anonymous

And the community there is kind of caustic

MARamezani

Shhhhh. They'll retain your diamond...

Anonymous

I don't think they're going to take away my diamond for having an opinion about meta :-)

MARamezani

Ah well. What do you... You get the idea.

MARamezani

19:46

I wonder how the hell he got up there.

Now I see why internet is Internet.

Star that.

Awesome.

OMG! I went easily impressed on this one:

Ilan

20:21

@DamkerngT.

Hi, how are you?

If you have any suggestions for this Q... I will highly appreciate this ell.stackexchange.com/questions/54329/…

MARamezani

@Ilan Hullo!

Ilan

hi

how are you?

MARamezani

Fine, thanks. You?

Ilan

I'm ok, have some English work to do :)

MARamezani

Hmm, regarding your question, what exactly is this letter about?

Ilan

20:25

As I mention

it is not a letter

it is an official confirmation that an employee has finished Internship

MARamezani

Searching These things usually have a norm and it's not about suggesting something.

@Ilan google.com/…

Ilan

hm

did not think about Internship as a searching word

:)

thanks a lot

going to search again

MARamezani

Sure. I gave it my shot.

1 a.m. here. Bye!

Ilan

thanks!

good night!

MARamezani

Nighty night!

Damkerng T.

20:40

@Ilan Hi! I'm good. Thanks! It's nice to see you again.

Ilan

ya

:)

Damkerng T.

Yes, like @MARamezani suggested, internship is a good word.

Ilan

but the question was how to name the document

about its header

Damkerng T.

Some useful keywords: internship, trainee, job experience, work experience, certificate.

Ilan

DECLARATION OF INTERNSHIP COMPLETION

Damkerng T.

20:41

I'd use Certificate.

Ilan

or Certificate?

Damkerng T.

Declaration is probably okay, but it sounds too big a word for me.

Ilan

so, CERTIFICATE OF INTERNSHIP COMPLETION

OK

Damkerng T.

Yes.

Ilan

I think that I take Certification

Damkerng T.

20:42

Or, Internship Completion Certificate, even.

Ilan

HM

ok :)

what a tough task :)

Damkerng T.

:D

Usually, this kind of letters is what I think of as stock letters.

I mean, it's very likely that your organization might already have a template for it.

> To whom it may concern,
This letter is to certify that Mr. X Y was working as a full-time employee with [Company Name] from ___ to ___.

Usually, it begins with something like that.

Argh! What happened to my internet connection!

Ilan

:)

@snailboat

greetings!

Iplodman

Oi oi!

How's life?

Damkerng T.

20:57

@Iplodman Life goes on!

Iplodman

Ah, good!

And what are you doing in this life? ;P

Damkerng T.

I'm doing good! :P

Transcript for